Friday, June 03, 2005

It's JUST like life at Gitma. The similarities are uncanny! (From Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History):

Until 1956, Shifrin and his fellow prisoners worked ten-hour days, seven days a week. Thereafter the work load was reduced to six days. Prisoners who attempted to escape, and were shot and killed some distance from the camp, were left to rot (though their index fingers were severed for purposes of fingerprint identification). The bodies of those shot close to camp were placed near the gate to terrorize and deter other inmates who might be contemplating escape...

I was going to write a post about the ACTUAL Gulog, but Rusty's done a fine fine job ( much better than I could have). You should, of course, read his post. But, in case you don't, I do want to highlight this bit:

Cageprisoners.com, an openly pro-jihadist website cloaked in a civil-libertarian dressing, documents the alleged abuses of 6 Bahraini prisoners of Camp X-Ray in this PDF document. Most of the allegations are nothing more than common prison horror stories, much worse could be seen in any prison inspired movie, but some of them do include the allegations of abuse by interrogators (including death threats), mishandling of the Koran, and the story of a guard who overeacted to one of the prisoners for religious reasons.

It jumped out at me, because Kel used Cageprisoners.com in one of her arguments. Not every considers them an "unbiased" source.

UpdateVal, at Babalu blog has his own little rant regarding what life in a "modern day gulag" looks like - one ignored by AI:

Some have their arms wrapped in refrigerator coils which are powered 24/7, rendering such pain that the use of their limbs is forever atrophied. Others have cables clamped to their testicles and the other ends connected to car batteries, destroying not only their bodies, but their manhood, or, if they be lucky enough to ever be released from their hell, their ability to create a family.

Of course, go read what Val says - he's got his own little message for Amnesty International. It's in bold.